Walker Percy on Today

Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimmage on this earth and knowing less than I ever knew before, having learned only to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies -- my only talent -- smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall -- on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire.

-- Walker Percy in The Moviegoer

-- Spent some good time on the phone with a friend this evening. We were talking about the big storm in New Orleans and how we felt about it. A confessional: I don't think I'm a racist, but I am concerned about some of my feelings about the whole event. I don't think of myself as prejudiced against the poor, but I have to confess I'm embarrassed about some of the thoughts that have popped into my head. Where do these things come from? It's like a sickness, I think. What can I do to get better?

-- I finished The Moviegoer tonight. There's something in the above piece that sounds familiar. Those pictures of "looters" on the news from New Orleans last week were pictures from a script, everyone becoming anyone. The You becoming the It. As if the story was written in advance. Here, they informed me, is how it must be interpreted.

-- The bomb fell last week and I was glued to the screen, like everyone else, watching the morality play work itself out. And somehow, I think, we were happy to see it because it rattled our windows and made us feel awake. It gave us a reason to get riled up and to write fat checks the Red Cross and to feel good.

-- I think there are better ways to feel good.

-- I'm wondering a little (but trying not to think about it too much) about the poor black families who were already living in the shelters in my town. Not nearly as interesting, are they? So what's the difference? So what's my problem? Why do I need the big production? How come it doesn't feel real unless there's a big movie theme playing in the background?

-- I don't know much what to do about this, but the merde is definitely stinking up the place.

-- I confess I know something about falling prey to desire.

-- So how to get out of this mess? I need something bigger than myself. I need roots. I need place and the stories of real people. I need a God who isn't constantly being reinvented by pop culture and I need faith. I need the opposite of dead, dead, dead. I need all that and the company of friends. That's what I need.